1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a lighting device configured to accommodate an optical fiber.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are lighting devices that directly or indirectly utilize laser light. Such lighting devices directly emit, for example, blue light emitted by a laser and transmitted over a transmitting medium, such as optical fiber, or produce and emit white light by transmitting, over optical fiber, blue light from a laser and irradiating phosphor with the transmitted blue light.
However, with such lighting devices, when the optical fiber breaks, laser light can leak out and harm people. This necessitates the provision of a fail-safe mechanism for preventing laser light from leaking if and when the optical fiber breaks (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-305802).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-305802 proposes an optical fiber self-breaking connector as a fail-safe mechanism. The optical fiber self-breaking connector can shift the axis of the optical fiber using heat generated by the optical fiber if and when a phenomenon occurs in which internal breakage of the optical fiber progresses due to, for example, heat generating as a result of the laser light collecting at a local bend in the optical fiber. In this way, the optical fiber self-breaking connector can prevent the laser light from advancing in the event that the above phenomenon occurs.